2010 Tartu-Odessa-Tbilisi, Part1 - Preface

, tartText: Me
Photos and other stuff: We


Preface

I had almost forgotten about it, the spectacular plan to go to Georgia by land. And I was about to search for plain-tickets. For to fly there and get it done. And then He called, asked when will we go and proposed some dates. Things were suddenly moving. Only for few people I had mentioned the plan, with way too little of reflecting enthusiasm for me to get properly ignited myself. And then He called and She seemingly just needed a bit more of a poking - “let’s go!” or I don’t even know what made the thing happen.
So we scheduled it, getting serious, considering my million-little-things-before-you-go-abroad-for-a-longer-time-for-the-first-time-in-your-life and few bigger ones, headaches, and His not before/not later issues, and She never rose any particular amendment proposals about the when. And then there were many issues, details, possibilities, strategies, even equipment, not to mention price calculations, what had to be thought of and talked about.
Sounds like a pursuit of an adventure? Planning a great cool trip? I won’t speculate about the possibly different motivations we had to go to Georgia by land, taking as many trains as (almost) possible, when I’m not even sure from which side to look at my own Rubik’s cube of reasons. I think we all had something to go away from. Simple watchword, of course, can be put forth: “Accompanying Me to Georgia for a year there as an exchange student.” Usually, people tend to like to have reasons, preferably understandable when presented in one short sentence. Hard to give up, like smoking. Thing is, one doesn’t have to go far east or west or north or south, one doesn’t have to climb a huge hill or dive to the darkness of salty waters to change the perception, to alter ones relationship with what one considers him/herself or the gray of the everyday or whatever existential question needs reconsidering, digesting, freshening or answering. Escapism is easy. One evening you just step out from your house, take a stroll in quiet evening streets and discover that the names you’ve given to places, texts and memories you have covered them with are not there anymore. You feel and see like a guest at your own home city; you walk and look around you like you’d have been born yesterday.
It’s healthy. To go away sometimes. To get freshened. Choose whatever way that pleases. We “took a train” from Estonia to Georgia.
I moved from Tartu to Tallinn, after 8 years of life in this University city. Not that I had somewhere to move, my things are now there at the attic of my mother’s small house. I slept at my childhood playhouse for the weeks I stayed in Tallinn, remarkably exactly I do still fit in there - just few centimetres of free space when I lay down. Nice fresh air, warm memories and small door.
Planning, organizing stuff around and moving, buying, packing, panicking, tie knots, keep the bridges nice and non-flam. Sure feels like the big thing coming up. And it is hard nevertheless, for weak and dubious people like me, to take the first step, to turn my back. But I’ve learned it’s marvellous, the walking after, that is.
We agreed to start from Tartu. Another official slogan for that was “to see Him and Her and little Her, who they will arrive from Italy, and the extended family of the house Me had lived at to say goodbyes”. Sound’s maybe weird, and weird it is, but in this green two-storied wooden tenementary house I had had a home, a real home with around 20 members of the “family” for years. This was a whole important chapter in my life what was about to be closed.
Getting further away from the spot of current life to calm down, relax and say goodbye to really close friends who you wouldn’t see otherwise for way too long was a good intermediate before the start. Why not? She seemed to like the thought of a little pause-place before the uncertainties of the road, and He was fully in to it – He also shares a close relationship with the house and those people living there.
Yes, we had a party. He arrived first, day before me. I got stuck in Tallinn with work, burned my nerves, failed to take a train to Tartu, went for bus instead, and thanked myself for the intermediate idea. I met them incidentally at the bus station of Tartu, Him, Her and little Her it is, and we shared a taxi to the house to find people already waiting for us, arrival made cozy.
Little talks, little drinks, guitar, violins. In the light of daybreak I found myself sleeping on the couch on the verandah I love, covered with kind blanket and wearing a coat, a gift by a friend.
She arrived that morning. She also had got stuck with work and panicked around a bit, and simple oversleeping being behind her arriving with a bus instead of the day’s first train.
Buffering us together in Tartu probably, in the end, saved some nerves for all of us and tuned us in. Intermediate Condition Additional.